Is your business bold enough?

Is your com­pa­ny will­ing to cre­ate soft­ware that is exclu­sive to iPhone or iPad (to iOS)? Do you think they should?

Why? Why not?

These are real­ly basic, rea­son­able, and in fact quite con­tro­ver­sial ques­tions to ask when dis­cussing mobile strat­e­gy with enter­prise devel­op­ment teams.

Saying ‘yes’ means saying ‘no’

Say­ing yes to deliv­er­ing the best expe­ri­ence means defin­ing a tar­get cus­tomer well, and not focus­ing on oth­ers. You have to be will­ing to say no.

In health­care, that seems quite unfair. Pos­si­bly even trou­bling. “What do you mean I can’t get the lat­est health­care advances on my phone if I have android?” Can quick­ly become very bad PR.

In bank­ing, there’s already an “inclu­sive­ness” debate… I’m sure no bank wants to be non-inclu­sive by tar­get­ing only an expen­sive set of devices to the exclu­sion of oth­ers.

The answer to this, of course, is about shift­ing per­spec­tive.

One isn’t deliv­er­ing “worse capa­bil­i­ties” to Android. Rather, you are cre­at­ing a base­line mobile web expe­ri­ence that any­one can take advan­tage of while cre­at­ing a sep­a­rate prod­uct with more capa­bil­i­ties for iOS devices.

In truth com­pa­nies that try to deliv­er only on the base­line of capa­bil­i­ties end up doing less than they oth­er­wise could. Why hold back fea­tures that are avail­able today because they are not uni­form­ly avail­able across plat­forms? Why hold life-sav­ing capa­bil­i­ties back because it takes longer to deliv­er them in a cross plat­form man­ner (let’s say because there’s twice as much test­ing involved, so releas­es are longer)? Why not just pick one plat­form to start so that at least one com­mu­ni­ty of users gets more than the base­line expe­ri­ence?

Real­i­ty kin­da makes these ques­tions some­what irrel­e­vant (regard­less of how inter­est­ing they may or may not be).

Uh, it’s already happening

Which means the real ques­tion is: Are you com­ing or are you being left behind?

Fam­zoo is not quite main­stream (it’s a good ser­vice though, you should check it out!). But Boston Chil­drens’ Hos­pi­tal is big league. How can they get away with an iOS only strat­e­gy?

Why is it happening?

It’s well known that iOS device own­ers spend more, so from a busi­ness per­spec­tive you want to get to the rev­enue. To do that, you’ll have to win it with the best expe­ri­ence pos­si­ble.

There is also more plat­form frag­men­ta­tion (than what was expe­ri­enced for desk­top com­put­ing) because the mobile and wear­able mar­ket is large enough to sup­port mul­ti­ple plat­form “win­ners”. These days, we’ve gone beyond mul­ti­ple plat­forms (iOS, Android) to sig­nif­i­cant new tech­nolo­gies that sim­ply make cross-plat­form impos­si­ble (Steve is for­mer Microsoft Exec­u­tive respon­si­ble for Office):

AR by itself isn’t a plat­form but it is pre­cise­ly the kind of plat­form fea­ture that makes cross-plat­form impos­si­ble. https://t.co/A8NqOSIvq5

Well, for one thing, it means quick­ly deliv­er­ing on the lat­est fea­tures when a plat­form change is avail­able. (Think iPhone X screen) Not only does this keep your app look­ing pol­ished, it sig­nals to your audi­ence that you care and are respon­sive to their needs and desires. [link to my post on do you sup­port the lat­est device]

It also means deliv­er­ing the best pos­si­ble capa­bil­i­ties, some­thing not always pos­si­ble when try­ing to build cross-plat­form capa­bil­i­ties. Devel­op­ers can do more when there is tight inte­gra­tion and a ded­i­ca­tion to tak­ing advan­tage of the lat­est fea­tures. Recent­ly Tar­get tried to answer IKEA with an aug­ment­ed real­i­ty app of their own, and deliv­ered a cross plat­form solu­tion instead of focus­ing on just iOS like IKEA. It didn’t work out so well.

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David

It's a quick read, and, if you can believe it considering that it's a book on investing, fun.

If you're looking for a simple and successful investing strategy, one that's purposely designed to keep you motivated, The Elephant's Paycheck is for you. And if you're already an accomplished investor, this book is likely for your spouse or your children so that they can become interested in what you're doing with the family's wealth.